Farms In Maryland

ROCKY RIDGE -- The smell from Rodney G. Harbaugh's hog farm hasn't been so bad lately, his neighbors say. But there are good days and bad days, and the bad days are pretty awful. "Sometimes, it's horrible," says Karen Kuhn, whose two-story colonial house is less than a mile from the Frederick County barns that hold Harbaugh's hogs. "It depends on which way the wind blows." Controversy over Harbaugh's hogs combined with growing concerns over large lot feeding operations elsewhere in Maryland and reports of hog-farm related environmental disasters in North Carolina have led to efforts put the brakes on the swine industry here.

Having stuffed our burlap sacks with enough greenery and crimson to garland a dozen windows, we set about choosing a tree. "It should be," muses my friend, "twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can't steal the star." The one we pick is twice as tall as me. A brave handsome brute that survives 30 hatchet strokes before it keels over with a creaking rending cry. - Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory The joy of cutting one's own Christmas tree that so many vicariously relive each year through this author's short story was played out across Maryland in recent weeks.

FREDERICK -- Early Monroe first got into organic farming because his 6-year-old son, Ryan, is allergic to the chemicals and dyes used in many conventional foods."

Concerned over reports that a large hog farm is being built near a wealthy subdivision northwest of Westminster, the chair of Carroll County's Environmental Affairs Advisory Board said yesterday that the group may schedule a meeting to debate the issue.Kevin E. Dayhoff, a landscape designer who heads the advisory board, said he plans to poll its seven members this week on the need for an extra meeting.The group declined yesterday to address the issue because both sides were not represented at a two-hour meeting.

Maryland has lost 30 commercial dairy farms since the first of the year, when a legislative task force began looking into the economic woes of this segment of agriculture, a new survey says.pTC Since 1995, the number of dairy farms in Maryland has declined 7 percent, to 940.The rate of decline is faster in Maryland than for the nation and for the northeastern United States, according to figures compiled by the American Farm Bureau."Not a week goes by that we don't have two or three farms going out of business," said William Zepp, of the state health department's Division of Milk Control.

The fava bean plants at Beckie and Jack Gurley's tiny farm in Sparks stand only 6 inches tall. The crop won't be ready to harvest for another five weeks, but the bulk of it has already been bought and paid for. It's all part of a different approach to farming known as community-supported agriculture, CSA for short. CSA can be traced to 1960s Japan, and it didn't make its way to this country until a Massachusetts woman tried it in the mid-1980s. CSA works like this: By making an investment of about $450, the consumer buys a share of a CSA farmer's weekly harvest.

PRESTON -- Dorsey Beasley's handshake is not what you'd expect from a man who's worked the fields of Caroline County for most of his 77 years. Instead of a wrenching, calloused vise grip, it's as gentle as his demeanor.Beasley wore a flannel shirt, dusty shoes and a smile as he greeted a visitor to his 5-acre farm near this Eastern Shore town. He once rented more land, but in retirement his work is confined to these few acres that rank among the smallest of small farms.He fumbled with a pocketknife while sitting in the cozy living room of his small country home and said proudly, "I ain't never had much, but I've kept what I've got."

For Jay Martin, growing tiny tomato, broccoli and watermelon plants from seed is more than a business; it's a way of life.The 42-year-old former landscape contractor packed up his family six years ago, moved from upstate New York to a tiny spread on the Eastern Shore and took a different approach to farming than most of his neighbors.Mr. Martin eliminated the use of all chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides in his greenhouse operation."It's our philosophy," Mr. Martin says of his family's approach to agriculture.

Maryland officials welcomed yesterday an impending federal crackdown on water pollution from livestock farming, saying it parallels farm-runoff controls adopted by the state earlier this year to combat Pfiesteria-related outbreaks in Chesapeake Bay.But environmentalists and Eastern Shore chicken farmers say the federal move could do more harm than good unless it requires that poultry companies like Perdue Farms Inc. help pay for needed pollution control measures."I...

James "Jimmy" Brown didn't punch a clock, work an eight-hour day or get a paycheck until he was almost 40 years old.Before that he got up with the sun each day and made a living working with his father on the family's 86-acre dairy farm in Glenelg.For years, profits from the Howard County farm supported his parents, his wife, Linda, and their three children.Today, the large red barn that once housed 68 milking cows is run down and serves as a storehouse for hay and straw. The tanks, pipeline and other equipment have been sold, and the family's four pigs are kept in the milking barn.